The town of Xiaolian, much like any other town, did not have its own cultivators. In the event of monsters or ghosts, they were forced to appeal to the closest righteous cultivation sect or pray that a wandering cultivator stumbled into their town. Xiaolian’s middling size attracted a few such cultivators, but none had come this season.

Cang Qiong was more than happy to take Xiaolian’s custom. Bai Zhan Peak especially had jumped at the chance for a night hunt so close to their sect. It was only a little strange that they requested a specific Qian Cao disciple to accompany them.

None of this particularly mattered to Li Hanyi.

All she cared about was that, after days of travel, she would get accommodations in the house of the requester. A room she only had to share with Liu Feng was better than a communal campfire. At least she could send Liu Feng out while she bathed, claiming basic decency. If there was anyone obsessed with keeping up honorable and decent interactions, it was Liu Feng.

She didn’t understand why he had been so swift to declare himself her roommate for the duration of the night hunt. Did he trust her so little? Did he think she would head for the hills at the first sign of trouble? Who knew what his reasons were, but Li Hanyi had no qualms about taking shameless advantage for her own purposes.

Li Hanyi did not want to think about why the other Bai Zhan disciples nodded sagely and didn’t try to fight for the other bed in the room.

Instead, she chose to focus on the solemn face of the town’s mayor as he beseeched the Cang Qiong cultivators to defeat the evil plaguing the town. The town wouldn’t survive if it continued to lose its young people, and so he humbly begged the cultivators to do something about it. Li Hanyi, for her part, spent much of his impassioned speech wondering if the town was losing people because the mayor and his wives were eating them.

His jowls quivered as he blotted the corners of his eyes with a handkerchief that his plump first wife handed him. Li Hanyi glanced at him out of the corner of her eyes as she gently sipped at her tea. At least she knew that none of the food was poisoned enough to affect either Liu Feng or herself. Years of making her own poisons and testing them on Liu Feng had given them both terrifying resistance to the most commonly available poisons.

She didn’t much care about the fates of the nameless rank and file who were dumb enough to not test their food before they ate it or developed immunity of their own.

The mayor seemed sincere enough. If she ignored the gold on his fingers and the opulence of his home, Li Hanyi could almost buy the sad portrayal of an elder just trying to look out for his community. But she had enough sense to conclude that he was either involved in the deaths or simply trying to protect his finances.

Whatever the reason, the Cang Qiong cultivators were going to be expected to hunt down the cause of Xiaolian’s slow death. Worse, Liu Feng expected Li Hanyi to take on the brunt of the actual slaying after he hunted down whatever monster was killing Xiaolian’s youths.

“Honored cultivators, this lowly one begs that you take pity upon this poor town,” the mayor wheedled, jowls wobbling as he bowed to the Cang Qiong disciples.

Li Hanyi pressed her lips together to keep from laughing at the caricature come to life. She breathed out of her nose and simply followed Liu Feng’s lead in bowing slightly back, desperate to avoid the cloying smell of incense and sweat. Prolonged exposure to cultivators had removed her resistance to the odors of the mundane world, after all.

Not that the mayor’s request really mattered. The Cang Qiong disciples were in Xiaolian for a night hunt. Everything malignant in and around Xiaolian was going to die. A night hunt cared not for the environment, only that it was a target-rich one. Wu Jinhao, Peak Lord of Bai Zhan, had not raised his disciples to care for more than that. However, Chang Jinfei, Peak Lord of Qian Cao, cared only that this might finally convince Li Hanyi to transfer peaks and stop being a thorn in his side.

The hope was that the number one problem disciple would enjoy herself so much that she willingly packed up her things and moved to Bai Zhan.

Li Hanyi wanted to laugh at that. As if the System would let her go anywhere but where her background character role was. Besides, she actually liked being a member of Qian Cao. Li Hanyi had a job there, one that served a purpose. On top of that, she was always free to indulge in whatever medical research she so chose.

This night hunt was the antithesis of Qian Cao’s guiding principles. The only involvement a good Qian Cao disciple should have had was staying out of the way and having their patients brought to them. But Li Hanyi was a different kind of disciple, one that would actively be participating in the hunt.

Liu Feng, the ranking disciple on the night hunt, grunted at the mayor. “We will take care of it.” That was all he had to say. No flowery promises or pretty words for their leader, no.

The mayor seemed flustered, but gamely pressed on. “Honored cultivators, this lowly one thanks you for your care and consideration—.”

Li Hanyi was not ashamed to admit that she tuned the man out and spent her evening stuffing her face with food she’d never get on Qian Cao.

***

Li Hanyi was not blessed with the same stamina that Liu Feng had. She would never be able to keep up with him on a physical level, and bridged the gap as much as she could with her cultivation instead. When that failed, she relied on good old-fashioned poison-laced needles.

The same needles that he was making her give up.

“No,” she said for the last time, arms crossed over her chest so that he couldn’t just reach into her sleeves and grab her pouches.

Liu Feng simply stood, one hand outstretched, and waited. “You can’t focus on your sword if you still have tricks.”

Since the whole point of taking her on this night hunt was to get Li Hanyi to use her sword, even she had to see the logic. “But what if it’s too much?”

“If I think you might die, then I’ll intervene.”

Gods but sometimes she hated him. Then he went and said things like that. Things that made her heart flutter until she shoved the thoughts into a mental hole and buried them. “You have to promise. If I’m in over my head, you have to protect me.” Dignity? Pride? Who cared about those when she could die just to acquire a weapon skill.

He shrugged in the tiniest twitch of his shoulders. “Very well. This Liu Feng swears to defend you.”

“Good enough for me.” If you couldn’t trust the most honorable character in the novel, then you couldn’t trust anyone. That didn’t mean she had to like it, and she scowled as she handed over her sleeve pouches.

He tucked them gingerly into his own sleeves and stretched his hand back out. “The rest.”

Li Hanyi said some very uncomplimentary things in English before bending down. She hiked up her pants legs and unrolled the bandages there, slapping the bundles of fabric and metal into his hand. “Fine.”

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He tucked them gingerly into his own pouches. Then stretched his hand out again.

Over and over they repeated the process. Legs, arms, the lining of her shirt, the hidden needles clinked as she removed them. He reached his hand out one last time and Li Hanyi scowled. “That was all of it!”

He pointed to her hairpin. “You lace that with Bone-Faced Spider venom.”

“Well, yes—wait. How did you know that?” Her eyes narrowed at him. There was only one way for him to know that.

Liu Feng gave her a look like she was the stupidest person alive and he didn’t pity her for it. “Did you forget what you wrote?”

She had hoped he wouldn’t, but it seemed like he really had. “You’re not supposed to read them!”

One immaculate brow rose and he stared at her. “They’re my letters. What else would I do but read them?”

Her mouth gaped wide as she stared back. There were so many things in those letters. The desperate need to be known, bitter truths and half-formed dreams. She wrote of loss, love she would never admit aloud, and more ways to kill a man than any maiden should know. He could ruin her, unmake her, have her cast out of her peak as a liar. “Trade them. Don’t read them, just trade them with me. Burn them and scatter the ashes to the winds. But don’t read them.”

“Then you should give me a fight worth remembering.” Neat fingers beckoned to her hairpin once more. “Show me your sword and I’ll give you one.”

“Deal.” She unpinned her hair and felt it fall down around her in a curtain of striped white and inky black. Li Hanyi slapped her hairpin into his hand and then busied herself with twisting the mess of her hair out of her face.

Liu Feng took pity on her and gave back a strip of some ribbon, white and pale as his own robes. “Use that.” Quietly, he slipped the bone hairpin into his sleeve.

Grunting her thanks, Li Hanyi quickly braided her hair, looped it, and secured the resulting bun in place with his ribbon. It was a style she used to do back in her first life when she was trying to look professional while working herself to the bone, so unbelievably anachronistic that it made him flush and look quickly away.

“Do it properly.”

“Give me back my hairpin then.”

Neither of them would budge, but Li Hanyi solved the impasse by picking a random direction away from Xiaolian and springing off. Let him fume about impropriety all he liked: she’d have the last word on what she did with her own hair. Li Hanyi turned up her nose at his displeasure, landing neatly by a tree, her hand on her sword hilt.

Liu Feng landed on a sturdy branch overhead, clearly ready to abide by his promise. “Show me your best, Li Hanyi.”

***

Her best was nothing special.

The first monster the pair found was a Three-Headed Bull, so-called for its three heads and bullish appearance. Every time Li Hanyi encountered a new monster, she wept bitter tears for each failure at creativity. The Three-Headed Bull, apart from being a particularly angry bovine, was also known for having particularly strong bones that made a very useful adhesive. It was also dumb as an ox despite having three brains at its disposal.

What mattered the most to I Hanyi was that it craved human flesh above all other meat.

It didn’t have the decency to be an herbivore. Oh, no, that beast salivated great globs of rancid saliva at the sight of her and bellowed lowly as it charged. Li Hanyi wanted no part in whatever its dinner plans were and dodged neatly out of the way with her sword outstretched. She struck at its legs, neatly severing the tendons to hamstring the beast, and watched it crash to the ground.

Essentially an angry barrel on four sticks, the Three-Headed Bull did not fare well with two of those sticks unable to be used. But still, it floundered after her, desperate for a pound of her flesh, and it used its remaining legs to heave its bulk across the ground. Its teeth gnashed as it bellowed in pain and frustration, and Li Hanyi might have felt badly for it… if it wasn’t trying to eat her.

The bullish creature dragged itself after her with its forelegs, teeth grinding as she sprang back and away. Striking any of its heads would do her no good. She lacked the upper body strength to cleanly separate any of the heads from its massive frame. Instead, she would have to fight it with wits instead of brawn.

All mammals subscribed to the same anatomical issues. Brain, lungs, heart, circulatory systems, muscles, the works.

Three heads meant three brains, but one body meant only one heart and two lungs. She should feel guilty about cutting down another living thing in the prime of its life, but instead, she only felt numb. Li Hanyi had no fear for her own life or safety, not with Liu Feng hovering so close. It was an exercise in skill for her, not a danger.

Perhaps that was why she didn’t move when the bull lowered at her, its sides covered in foam as it raged at her. It moved faster than she would have thought possible, one great horn gouging at the dirt beneath her. Her sword glanced off its horn, the length of one of its noses, and embedded uselessly in the meat of its shoulder.

She went flying, knocked off course by the monster’s advance. The Three-Headed Bull gave no quarter. So desperate for the taste of her flesh, it all but slathered itself in loam as it dragged itself towards her retreating body. It paid no mind to tactics or strategy, only its own ravenous hunger. Li Hanyi did not have the confidence to do any fancy tricks like what they did in the movies.

No, she stuck to what she knew: rolling gracelessly in the dirt and loam until it was all over her formerly pristine robes. Not that she cared about being perfect and pristine when a Three-Headed Bull was trying to feast on her corpse. Li Hanyi rolled, keeping her sword clutched tight to her chest, lashing out only to keep its teeth at bay.

She regretted ever thinking that a night hunt would be simple. Regretted ever thinking that an overly complex cow would be easy picking for her first kill. As she rolled over a rock that dug into her stomach and the small of her back, she even regretted becoming friends of any kind with Liu Feng. Would that she could return to a life of simple medical training and spare herself this suffering.

Cultivation did not automatically equate to combat skills. Especially not when medical cultivators were really only trained in basic self-defense and not much else. Li Hanyi was, and probably would remain, the only exception. She kept thinking that, almost as if she obsessed over it, as the monster of a bull bore down on her with murder in its heart.

This was not what she signed up for when she agreed to go on this night hunt. Li Hanyi gave her best shot at it. The only way she would get better at fighting monsters was by fighting monsters. That didn’t mean she had to like it. And, oh, by all of her ancestors, did she not like it.

The bull lowed, angry and mean, pawing at the ground with a massive hoof. Its back legs dragged as it rushed her once more. She watched it move and readied her sword for its next move, hoping against everything that she could manage something to bring the beast finally to its end.

“Don’t just flail your sword at it! Be one with your blade. Feel the way it wants to move and trust it!” Liu Feng, safely ensconced in the trees, called out to Li Hanyi. It was good advice if she ignored the weird mystical nonsense that all cultivation-related information tended to be.

Li Hanyi flipped herself to her feet, stabbing upward as she went, and gave an undignified snort. “Easy for you to say— you’re safe and sound up a tree!” Follow the way her left buttock. If she did what her sword wanted, it’d end up tip-first, stuck in the ground, where it would do exactly zero good to anyone, let alone its owner.

Li Hanyi got lucky.

Somehow, her sword and the bull managed to line up just so, the razor-sharp edge of the sword parting the monster’s flesh like a hot knife through butter. Its guts spilled out, steaming and reeking to high heaven, onto the ground. A killing blow made by accident was still a killing blow. Blood soaked the grass, spreading in great globs of thick near-black liquid, even as the bull struggled to get back to its feet.

A beast was a beast no matter what the shape. It lacked the intelligence to know that it was already dead.

Cutting off its heads was a mercy.

Li Hanyi flicked her blade to clean it of the bull’s blood and gore before she carefully resheathed it. She gave a heavy sigh as she turned to look at Liu Feng. “Let me guess. Not good enough?”

Liu Feng simply stepped out of the tree, face blank as he all but walked down on the air itself, unruffled as he stalked across the clearing. “Li Hanyi. The purpose of taking you on this night hunt was to help you discover what your sword’s ability is.” His mouth flattened into a thin line and his eyebrows furrowed. “Flailing around isn’t going to do you any good. Nor does it reflect well on your teachers.”

“Ah. You have… a point.” She had the grace to wince and look away from her friend. Her performance against the bull didn’t reflect well on anyone at all, least of all Liu Feng himself. “It’s not like I’m used to fighting monsters, Liu Feng. Set your expectations a little lower.”

“Again.” He jerked his head toward the forest. “Next time, stay on your feet.”

Li Hanyi spared herself a moment of self-pity before she brushed off as much grass and dust as she could reach. She never should have expected anything else from the baby War God of Bai Zhan. He would keep throwing her at monsters until she pulled an impossible trick out of nowhere. What made matters worse was that she needed this more than he did. “Lead the way.”